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A no-strike list may shield Yemen’s ancient treasures from war

People’s Resistance Forces patrol after they recapture Baraqish ancient city from Houthi forces in Ma’rib, Yemen

Aisling Irwin

By Aisling Irwin

Tens of thousands of new archaeological sites have been discovered in Yemen by researchers who are now drawing up candidates for a “no-strike list” for combatants in the latest attempt to protect its treasures from the war.

Since 2015, the Yemen government, backed by a Saudi Arabian-led coalition, has been fighting Houthi rebels. The human toll reached at least 10,000 last week, according to the UN, and structures such as the Great Dam of Marib, the pre-Islamic walled town of Baraqish and the old cities of Sana’ and Zabid — both World Heritage Sites – have been damaged.

“There was no reason to attack a residential centre that is a World Heritage Site as well,” says Bijan Rouhani, vice-president of the International Council on Monuments and Sites’s risk preparedness committee.

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Despite protests from UNESCO, some strikes seem to have targeted historic sites that are of no strategic value, says Peter Stone, chair of the UK Committee of the Blue Shield, an NGO that seeks to protect cultural property in time of conflict.

To ramp up the pressure, academics from the University of Oxford’s Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) project are producing a cultural heritage list which they say the US Committee of the Blue Shield (USCBS) will put forward to the Saudi-led coalition to use as a no-strike list. It should be ready in a few weeks.

Spectacular new discoveries

“Yemen stands out as needing our help,” says Robert Bewley of EAMENA, which is documenting ancient sites across the region using Google Earth — a “phenomenal source that is transforming how archaeologists do their work”, says Bewley.

The Arabian peninsula is an archaeological jewel, according to St John Simpson, a senior curator at the British Museum in London. “It has one of the highest densities of archaeological sites and a very long history of urban civilisation with ancient infrastructure, palaces and temples.”

“It’s almost a joke the rate at which we are discovering sites – it’s hard to convey just how much we are recovering,” says Michael Fradley of EAMENA.

Spectacular discoveries include ancient walled cities, historic mountaintop villages, prehistoric burial sites and even long rows of standing stones, or trilithons, linked with the incense trade.

Information from Google Earth is combined with historical field records and some 40,000 aerial photographs taken by the UK’s air force (RAF) between the 1950s and 1970s, which give a seamless impression of how Yemen was then, says Andrea Zerbini, who is working with Fradley on finding candidates for the list.

Will armed forces listen?

Between 400 and 2,000 sites will make it onto the suggested no-strike list. Whether the combatants will pay heed is another matter.

“We have got some relatively good evidence that these lists work,” says Stone, citing NATO aerial strikes in Libya in 2011 which managed to avoid some important monuments.

The USCBS says today’s military has the scope to spare cultural property “as never before” because of precision aerial bombing techniques.

“To be effective, however,” it says, “no-strike lists should be made available to military operation planners, and especially targeting experts, who must be willing – or convinced – to incorporate the information into their targeting plans.”

Anna Paolini, director of UNESCO’s regional office in Doha, Qatar, says that UNESCO sent a list of World Heritage sites to the coalition when war broke out, and reminded them of their obligations under the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.

“It’s really difficult to say whether it has had any effect,” she says.

At the very least, the new list will increase the legal pressure on the coalition, says Rouhani, because, under the Hague Convention, there is criminal liability for some cultural offences.

Looting threat

Meanwhile, a Red List for Yemen, describing the types of precious objects that are at risk from looting, will be published in the next few months by the International Council of Museums in Paris, France, and circulated to customs officials and art dealers to alert them to illegal materials.

Bewley says that satellite imagery – which can pick up signs of digging – has shown little evidence of looting so far.

“Looting tends to occur in the immediate post-conflict situation when ceasefires start to be enforced and border controls start to be lifted,” says Simpson.

He highlights Yemen’s carved stone portrait busts, dating from the 6th century BC to the 2nd century AD, and commonly placed in niches, tombs and urban cemeteries, as in danger of looting.

“They are often beautifully polished, inlaid with glass or stone,” he says. “They are very distinctive yet anonymous at the same time. They are very attractive and they are portable.”